The Road to Yelloy
"Choco, I'm sorry... I was wrong..."
Yeon said it in a tearful voice, but Choco — already back in her fox form — merely jerked her head away and refused to answer. Yeon tried calling her name again. Choco squeezed her eyes shut and curled into a tight, unassailable ball.
The message could not have been clearer: I don't want to see you, and I don't want to hear you. Yeon looked ready to crumble from the shock of it, but Choco had no intention of letting her off the hook.
Three hours. Three entire hours of being Yeon's dress-up doll, stuffed into outfit after outfit. Yes, she had said Yeon could do whatever she wanted — but that had not been an invitation to go on forever. She had even dropped hints midway through that they ought to get going, and Yeon had just kept chirping "just this one more" while swapping clothes at will.
The last shred of guilt Choco had been carrying evaporated completely. All that remained was a single burning resolve: You played with me like that, so I'm going to drag you through nonstop hunting as revenge. Giving her the silent treatment right now was part of the lesson. She needed a wake-up call.
Of course, Choco knew this was not how a grown adult twelve years her senior was supposed to behave. But sometimes a person just had to be petty. Besides, being used as a dress-up doll had drained more mental energy than she'd expected. She wanted to rest.
That was why she'd shifted back into a fox. They still had an hour left in the carriage, and if she stayed in human form she'd have to keep entertaining Yeon. She simply didn't have it in her.
And there was a decisive reason beyond that: she and Yeon were not alone in the carriage bound for Yelloy Barrier Fortress.
In the outermost seat sat a woman, chin propped on her hand, staring out the window with a stony expression. She hadn't so much as glanced their way, even as Yeon apologized to Choco. Her hair was a piercing blue that matched her icy demeanor perfectly — and that woman was yet another reason Choco couldn't stay in human form.
If I go around with fox ears and tails showing, who knows what kind of attention I'll get.
It wasn't as though beastkin didn't exist in Al Fantasia. Far from Lucifen, there was the Kingdom of Lefhel, a nation of beastkin whose ruler was known as the Lion King. But Lefhel was a high-level zone that only players in the three-hundreds ever visited. Lucifen and Yelloy Barrier Fortress were beginner areas. And given how insular the beastkin were, they had no reason to travel this far.
So if a beastkin suddenly showed up here? Word would spread through the entire region by the end of the day, and it would be a disaster. Sightseers who'd read the eyewitness reports, flashy clickbait YouTubers — every kind of nuisance would come crawling out of the woodwork.
There was a reason she'd disguised herself as an ordinary human from the moment they entered Lucifen Village. She hadn't seen any other players besides Yeon these past few days, but you never knew when you might get caught somewhere unexpected. Which meant there was no reason to stay in human form — especially not if it meant the discomfort of hiding her ears and tails. Of course, she had no intention of explaining any of this to Yeon just to make the whining stop.
You need to be punished a little.
"We'll be departing shortly!"
While Choco was thinking all this, the hour must have arrived, because the coachman called out in a booming voice. A few people glanced over, but aside from those already aboard, no one else climbed in. The coachman craned his neck this way and that, confirmed there were no more passengers, then climbed up to his seat and took the reins.
With a hearty "Hiyah!" the carriage began to rumble slowly forward.
I'll just wake up in an hour. Choco let out a long breath and drifted off to sleep.
And then, exactly ten minutes later.
"Kwehng..."
"Are you okay?"
Choco was suffering from motion sickness she had never seen coming.
Motion sickness? In a game?! The total distance she'd traveled by carriage in this game could have circled the entire country, and not once had she ever gotten sick. Sure, some people got motion sick even in games, but that was limited to those with extremely sensitive inner ears. It had never applied to her.
But whatever the past, she was motion sick now. Horribly so. Her head spun, and her stomach lurched as if she might throw up at any second. The carriage jolted again, sending her lurching, and Choco squeezed her eyes shut. She knew the roads here couldn't compare to modern pavement, but this was excessive.
"Um, excuse me — is it always this bumpy?"
"Can't be helped. This ain't the capital. You oughta be grateful the road's even this good."
The coachman answered Yeon's question halfheartedly. He wasn't wrong. It couldn't be helped. In the old days it might have been different, but these days a stagecoach leaving Lucifen ran less than once a day. No money, no people — there was no workforce left to maintain the roads. And even if the ride was rough, players didn't get motion sick in a game, so nobody complained. It was a one-time trip anyway. A combination of all those factors had produced this exact situation.
Damn it. It's not like I can just walk.
It might even have been faster. Players never tired, so if you ran without stopping you'd arrive sooner than the carriage. The only reason nobody did that was because the act of running nonstop was mentally exhausting. And she, of all people, would actually get tired. She'd felt it firsthand more than once while hunting in Lucifen Forest. Stamina — something that didn't exist for anyone else — existed for her.
So getting off the carriage was out of the question. Better to ride it out, motion sickness and all...
But that resolve wavered every time the carriage gave a particularly violent lurch. Should I just get off now? At this rate I won't even be able to hunt when we arrive.
"What should I do..."
Choco whimpered weakly, completely limp, and Yeon could only fidget in place, helpless.
Before boarding, Yeon had been worried that she herself might get motion sick. It made sense. In the real world, the moment she got in a car or on a train, the nausea hit. She'd assumed a game wouldn't be any different. Instead, she was perfectly fine — and Choco, of all people, was the one getting sick.
Choco had been playing Al Fantasia far longer than she had, so Yeon had figured she'd ridden plenty of carriages and wouldn't get sick. But the miserable little fox in front of her looked exactly like Yeon did in the real world.
What did I used to do at times like this? Yeon slowly searched her memory — and then remembered she always carried motion sickness medicine. Which, of course, was useless here. There was no such thing as motion sickness medicine in this world.
What do I do... Ah!
Something came to her. Yeon scooped up the whimpering Choco — not by the sides the way she usually did, but as if lifting something fragile. She settled the fox onto her lap and curled her body around her, the way a bird might brood an egg.
She wasn't even sure this would work. She only remembered that a long time ago, when her motion sickness had been so bad that medicine did nothing, her mother had held her like this. And that it had helped, quite a bit. Of course, this time it wasn't a person but a fox, and the posture was completely different — but she figured it was worth a try. In truth, all she was doing was wrapping her own body around Choco. The jolting was the same as ever.
Fortunately for Yeon, the dying-animal whimpers gradually faded, and before long a soft, rumbling snore took their place. One minute she'd been groaning with nausea, and the next she'd passed out so thoroughly she was snoring. It was so absurd it was almost cute. Yeon let out a small, involuntary laugh.
"That fox. Did you tame her?"
"Huh? Oh — yes..."
It was a little while later that their fellow passenger — who had sat through all the earlier commotion without so much as blinking — finally spoke. The carriage had settled into a gentle sway, as if the earlier violence had never happened. Maybe they were getting close to their destination. Yeon, who'd been hunched awkwardly around Choco, finally straightened her back.
"She's an unusual fox. Two tails."
"Ah."
Now that she mentioned it, the transformation hiding one of the tails had come undone. The brutal motion sickness must have knocked Choco out so thoroughly that the disguise had slipped. Remembering what Choco had told her, Yeon made a slightly awkward face. She was still trying to figure out how to talk her way out of this when the woman spoke again.
"I didn't mean to put you on the spot. I was simply... curious."
"Ah, um... well. Yes. She's a fox I tamed."
"Tamed" was a stretch — if anything, Yeon was the one depending on Choco's goodwill — but she went with it for now.
"Taming, I believe they call it? The skill for domesticating monsters. I've tried it a few times myself. It's as difficult as everyone says."
"What kind of monster did you try?"
"Foxes. I like foxes. And you?"
"I like foxes too."
"I'm envious. I was hoping I'd succeed as well..."
"Ahaha..."
It wasn't as though foxes were the only thing Yeon liked, but she didn't bother saying so.
"What kind of fox do you like?"
"Sorry? What kind?"
"I like fennec foxes the most. Regular forest foxes and arctic foxes are nice too, but I think fennecs are the cutest. They're so small, and those huge ears — I just think they're adorable..."
"Ah — uh, I see..."
For someone who looked like she wouldn't say a word, their fellow passenger turned out to be quite the talker. Her voice was as husky as her appearance was striking, so the sharp impression remained — but the gap between how she looked and how she sounded was enormous.
"Did you know? Fennec foxes exist in Al Fantasia too. In the Belu Desert, I think it was. I saw pictures, and they were so cute. I was a little disillusioned when I heard a pack of them swarmed someone taking photos and tore into them, but I still envy anyone who's been. You need to be at least level 150 to walk around there without dying. It's a place I really want to visit someday..."
"Th-that so..."
This person really, truly loved foxes. Yeon broke into a cold sweat as the unsolicited torrent of words poured over her. She was always clinging to Choco and showering her with affection, but her actual personality was quite introverted. Conversations like this were unfamiliar territory. A purely businesslike exchange she could handle. Perhaps the woman read the panic on her face, because she gave a wry smile.
"I'm sorry. Did I talk too much?"
"N-no! Not at all!"
"It's all right. My friend always says the same thing. 'You look fine, but once you get going you turn into a bit of an otaku, and it's off-putting.'"
"Ah, haha..."
Yeon didn't know who this friend was, but the description was spot-on. Not that it mattered much — the woman's looks more than made up for it.
The woman tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, shed the earlier enthusiasm, and spoke again.
"Sharing a carriage is a kind of fate, isn't it? Shall we introduce ourselves? I'm Joo Se-jin."
"Ah — I'm Yeon... Um, is that your real name...?"
"Real name? Ah. Right — in the game, people use nicknames."
Joo Se-jin said it as if the realization had only just caught up with her.
"Pretty Cute."
"...Come again?"
"That's my nickname. Pretty Cute."
The gap between name and appearance hit Yeon all over again. She managed an awkward smile.